BERNARDINO DA LAREDO

BERNARDINO da LAREDO. – Franciscan mystic, born in Seville in 1482, died after September 1540. After studying medicine, he entered the Friars Minor as a lay brother; in the custody of the Holy Angels in Sierra Morena (Seville) he served as a nurse. Of a very austere and contemplative life, he wrote, besides two medical works (*Metaphora medicina*, Seville 1522, and *Modus faciendi cum ordine medicandi*, ibid. 1527), the famous *Subida del Monte Sion* (ibid. 1535), which was reprinted many times. Renowned for miracles, he died in the odor of sanctity at the convent of St. Francis del Monte in Valverde, in the diocese of Seville; the Franciscan Martyrology commemorates him on April 16.

The *Subida del Monte Sion*, which recalls St. John of the Cross’s *Subida del Monte Carmelo*, is divided into three books: knowledge of one’s own nothingness, meditation on the mysteries of the sacred Humanity of Christ, and contemplation of the Divinity. For its study, the second edition, revised especially in the third part (1538), must be taken into account. In style and overall presentation, the work reflects more the Northern mysticism of the Low Countries, from which it derives its particular tone and character, than Spanish mysticism. Bernardino, in fact, though generally sparing in citing his sources, drew heavily on the Carthusian Henry of Baume (Hugo de Balma) and especially on the *Directorium aureum* of his fellow confrere Henry Herp (Harpihus, d. 1477); yet Bernardino’s influence on the great Spanish mystics was considerable. In short, repeating with some reservations a judgment of a 17th-century apologist of St. John of the Cross (Fray Basilio Ponce de León), one may say that almost all the doctrine of the *Dark Night* is already found in Bernardino, while it is also well known that St. Teresa of Avila (*Vida*, ch. 23) read him with preference and followed him as a guide in her unitive prayer.